Della possesses just $1.87 at the beginning of the story from prudently spending money, haggling for the best prices at the grocers and butchers, and frugally saving her exact change after purchasing necessary items to live. The narrator also mentions the sixty cents of Della's $1.87 was in pennies, which emphasizes her economical behavior, and she sobs alone on Christmas Eve out of fear that she will not be able to buy her husband a worthy present. The narrator also comments that Della had been carefully saving for months but still did not have enough money to purchase anything valuable for Jim. However, Della ends up looking at her reflection in the mirror and realizes that she can sell her beautiful, long locks of hair for money. Della proceeds to sell her lovely hair to Madame Sofronie for twenty dollars and ends up purchasing Jim a costly platinum fob chain for his valuable watch, which is a worthy Christmas present.
In O'Henry's "Gift of the Magi," we learn that Della gets the $1.87 to purchase her husband's Christmas gift by pinching every possible penny from the household shopping budget. In fact, sixty cents of her savings are in pennies.
The narrator states:
Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
By this, the narrator means that Della has driven hard bargains over food purchases at the various stores where she shops. She blushes when she thinks of how cheap the shop owners must think she is, even if they are silent: who but a skinflint would make such a fuss over every last cent?
Of course, we know that she drives a hard bargain not because she is cheap but because she loves Jim so much she wants to buy him a fine Christmas present. However, since all her efforts have only yielded her a small amount of money, she will sell her beautiful hair—her most prized possession—to buy Jim a gift.
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